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Edward Hirsch and Marie Howe read from and discuss their highly-anticipated new collections. Joining them at the podium will be Eugene Schlanger, author of September 11: Wall Street Sonnets and Other New York City Poems

The only event of its kind, the annual Poets House Showcase is a free exhibit featuring all of the new poetry books and poetry-related texts published in the United States in a single year—with more than 2,000 titles on view from over 500 commercial, university and independent presses. Thanks to the generosity of the New York Public Library, this year’s Showcase will take place at the historic Jefferson Market Library, a nineteenth-century landmark that has played host to Stephen Crane, E. E. Cummings and Marianne Moore.

On the occasion of George Oppen's centennial and the publication of his Selected Prose, Daybooks, and Papers, poets and scholars gather to honor the life and work of this spare, powerful and original poet.

Who were the Beat Poets? Why are they ""beat"" and what does that mean? A look at their work, and the decades of the fifties and sixties in which they wrote, will explain why they remain iconic figures in American poetry. Their writing was shocking to some yet celebrated by others. Contemporary reaction to their poems was vociferous and divided. Today they continue to be notorious, though there is growing interest in their lively, noisy, exciting work. The Beat goes on!

Nancy Willard, winner of the Newberry Award for A Visit to William Blake's Inn: Poems for Innocent and Experienced Travelers, will introduce us to the unforgettable characters she created and encourage the whole group to compose a collaborative poem under her direction.

Edna St. Vincent Millay, an elfin, red-haired diva of the sonnet, published some of the wisest, sexiest, and most feminist poetry of the 20th century. From her childhood as caretaker of her siblings in Camden, Maine, to her adolescent near-miss at a national prize for "Renascence" which sparked a national poetry controversy, to her bohemian life in one of Greenwich Village's tiniest brownstones, Millay was as uncompromising in her devotion to the rules of verse as she was in her flaunting of social rules.

Edna St. Vincent Millay, an elfin, red-haired diva of the sonnet, published some of the wisest, sexiest, and most feminist poetry of the 20th century. From her childhood as caretaker of her siblings in Camden, Maine, to her adolescent near-miss at a national prize for "Renascence" which sparked a national poetry controversy, to her bohemian life in one of Greenwich Village's tiniest brownstones, Millay was as uncompromising in her devotion to the rules of verse as she was in her flaunting of social rules.

Who were the Beat Poets? Why are they ""beat"" and what does that mean? A look at their work, and the decades of the fifties and sixties in which they wrote, will explain why they remain iconic figures in American poetry. Their writing was shocking to some yet celebrated by others. Contemporary reaction to their poems was vociferous and divided. Today they continue to be notorious, though there is growing interest in their lively, noisy, exciting work. The Beat goes on!